Whatever Doesn't Kill You...

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My mom told me that the Chinese eat anything that doesn't travel on two feet. No legs, four legged, six legged, many legged creatures... all fair game for food.  We found out how true this was on Donganman Street while on a whirlwind tour of Beijing.

Donganman Street sells snacks you would usually see on an episode of Fear Factor.  Grasshoppers, sea horses, star fish, crickets, silk worm, cockroaches, worm, cow intestines, scorpions... all cooked up as a crispy or gooey snack.

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Is insect really the food of the local people?  Not really.  It's actually quite expensive compared to local food.  Is it the food of idiot tourists who think they can eat like the local people?  You bet.  And we had to try something.

We thought we'd start off lite and had deep fried grasshopper as our appetizer.  They basically just fry the sucker in oil to a crisp and then sprinkle salt and pepper over it.  It honestly wasn't too bad.  It kind of tasted like the oily, salty, crunchy bits of MacDonald's french fries you find at the bottom corner of the french fry sleeve.

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Next up, as the entree, was scorpion.  We're not really sure why we could eat something that poisonous and we're not really sure what possessed the first person to even bother to try.

The idea of eating a scorpion is so foreign that we didn't even know how to start.  We had to ask the cook.  Do you peel it?  Do I get a fork?  Can I eat the stinger?  Does it go well with Cabernet?

So what does it taste like?  Not like chicken.  We'll save you the gory parts.

Summer palace lion guards
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But maybe the most disgusting part about this whole gastronomical adventure was not actually the eating but the picking out of scorpion bits from between our teeth a little later.

Bon Appetito,

Lenny and Jenn